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The vision for creating artist supported studio spaces within Vancouver schools began in 2015, with the Art and Discovery Studio when a disused art room in Florence Nightingale Elementary, a public school in Vancouver’s East Side, was restored into a working studio. Through the support of the Rennie Foundation, the school was able to retain an artist-in-residence to work collaboratively with teachers and their students within the studio.
The Art and Discovery Studio has since become a vibrant hub of shared creative expression, that has contributed to a sense of belonging for individual students and for the whole school community. It has also established itself as a viable model for providing rich, ongoing, visual arts engagement for students within schools.
“Studying art in many forms, is an essential part of success in school, work and life. I have seen it build critical thinking and self-confidence. In many of my schools I’ve noticed the quality of art study is disappearing. Over all my years of being in schools and youth organizations I noticed that Florence Nightingale has a unique set of students. I believe it is because of the studio space dedicated to arts. The students at Nightingale are excelling, engaged and have a thirst for knowledge.”
Christine MacKenzie, visiting artist
In 2016, the studio hosted two community roundtables involving art educators and arts community partners across multiple fields, including universities, public schools, arts organizations and galleries. These discussions sought to affirm the importance of the visual arts in education and how the use of surplus space and community partnerships could provide opportunities for equitable and sustainable education in the visual arts. One of the outcomes of the roundtable was the development of district criteria for an artist in residence studio program and the establishment of a second artist supported studio space at Sir Pierre Elliott Trudeau Elementary. The following year, the Vancouver School Board approved studio spaces in four additional elementary schools and the Artist in Residence Studio program or AIRS was launched.
Through a partnership with Emily Carr University of Art and Design, to sponsor a studio space at Mount Pleasant Elementary School, and additional funding support from the Vancouver School Board and other financial partners we expanded the program to 8 schools the following year. In 2019/20 school year we added 5 pilot residencies in 6 additional schools, 2 media arts residencies and a mentorship program.
This 2020/21 year we were able to retain residencies at existing sites even in the midst of a pandemic . Find out more about the Studios for 2020/21 and our pandemic journey here
AIRS has continued to be supported by Vancouver School Board District #39, both financially and with the support of district staff and school administrators and AIRS lead teachers.
In May 2023, AIRS became an incorporated nonprofit society, to create more financial sustainability and operational flexibility to better support artistic development, innovative residencies and partnerships , as well as ongoing research and advocacy for the vital role of the arts within education today. AIRS continues to foster its unique integrated partnership with the VSB to collaboratively develop and sustain a vision and working model for equitable access to high quality and socially relevant arts education for the learning and wellbeing of elementary students within the Vancouver School District.
“I wish we could stay here forever.”
Queen Alexandra Student
The Artist In Residence Studio program is honoured to be working together on the unceded, unsurrendered and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm|Musqueam, Sḵwxwú7mesh|Squamish & səlilwətaɬ |Tsleil-Waututh people, where we learn, live and work. We humbly acknowledge that we are unlearning and relearning and with this acknowledgement comes the commitment to engage in ongoing acts of reconciliation.
PHONETIC PRONUNCIATION: xʷməθkʷəy̓əm - Musqueam (pronounced Mus-kwee-um) Sḵwxwú7mesh - Squamish Nation (pronounced Skwa-mish) səlilwətaɬ - Tsleil-Waututh (pronounced Slay-wah-tuth) Please do not capitalize x in xʷməθkʷəy̓əm & s in səlilwətaɬ Do capitalize S in Skwxwú7mesh *The above has been shared by Chas Desjarlais- District Principal of Indigenous Education.
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